This rather whimsical little appetizer came about after some fooling about with leftover baby scallops I had on hand for another recipe. Basically, the idea I was aiming for was to suggest baby scallop ‘eggs’, in a Seaweed salad ‘nest’. The seaweed I used is Wakame, but for added color and texture, I also include some shredded Chinese Black Fungus (also known as ‘Tree-Ear’ or ‘Cloud-Ear Fungus). This is my first attempt thus far, and I may wish to tweak the basic idea, but read on to see what I did…

I reconstituted my seaweed and the fungus, and then shredded the seaweed into thinner strips. The fungus, in this case, was already shredded in its dried form, so I was saved some effort there.

I tossed the shredded seaweed in a light dressing made from equal parts sesame oil, plain vegetable oil, and lemon juice.

I cooked the scallops simply by steaming them for a few minutes without any added seasonings. As you can see, they threw off quite a bit of liquid and I am rather sorry now that I didn’t think of that in advance and use the sweet juices as part of the ‘nest’ dressing somehow…

After forming my nest in a Scallop shell, and ‘laying’ my eggs in the middle, I garnished the edges with a few sesame seeds for just a little more visual interest.

On the whole, I was generally pleased with the result, although I found the dressing wasn’t all that interesting. I’m also not sure if I really liked lemon juice with sesame oil or not but sesame is often used with seaweed and lemon definitely complements scallops… Still, I like the idea of maybe reducing the scallop juices next time and the using that as the base for a different sort of dressing entirely. I’ll update you on any developments…